The stone corridors of the dungeon had ceased to be mere architecture; they had become a throat, narrow and damp, swallowing me whole. As the priests escorted me from the lightless sanctity of my cell, the atmosphere felt thick enough to bruise. The air was a stagnant soup of mineral dust, ancient mildew, and the sharp, copper tang of iron—the scent of a thousand years of shackled desperation.
My wrists were bound with a ceremonial cord—braided hemp soaked in brine to make it bite. Every jarring step sent a fresh flare of heat through my skin where the fibers sawed into the flesh. The priests had stripped me of my dignity and replaced it with a mockery of divinity: robes of heavy, bone-white silk that hissed against the floor like a nest of disturbed vipers.
I tried to force a regal stif
